Bodily resurrection, he knew, was simple in principle: all the information contained in the living person was conserved, only now diffused into the wider world. But the degree of diffusion mattered, too, he knew. To resurrect those long since eaten by worms would require tracking down the worms, and thus in turn the robins that ate the worms, and the cats that ate the robins...and so on and so forth.
Callix's parents bodies, on the other hand, were readily at hand, and still reasonably well preserved. What decay there was could be offset by any number of methods: his own genetic material, of course, preserved some memory of them, which he could use to reconstruct them. Then there was memorabilia--their diaries, their old possessions, their letters to friends. And finally, his own memories.
Callix almost surprised himself with his initial success: perhaps he had doubted the principle, even though of course it was perfectly logical and sound.
With one success in hand, he felt emboldened to go further. Having resurrected his parents, he now had new source of genetic material and memories with which to resurrect those close to his parents. They were the next link in a chain radiating out from himself:
His parents, reconstructed from the traces they had left on him, could in turn be used to reconstruct those who had left their traces on them, and so on and so forth. Ad infinitum.
As he practiced, he perfected his technique: resurrections came faster and easier. Missing information could be filled in from multiple sources. Someone whose only physical remains were a slightly richer iron contain the dark earth where they had been buried could now be reconstructed from the memories they had left in others; from the physical information in their descendents, and antescedents; from the physical traces they had left on the world.
Within five years, Callix had resurrected almost ten million people. Truly, he felt, he had mastered the forces of decay and fragmentation. He could restore a human being who had lived decades before, and give him back his personality.
Although on this last point, there was some lingering doubt. Each chain in the link represented some possibility of missing information. And as time went on, he began to doubt even the earlier links in the chain. Were his parents acting as they always had? Was he sure their personalities were unchanged from before their deaths?
Of course, it was hard to be sure this was even a meaningful question: obviously, the fact of having died, of having ceased to be for some years, would change a person. And even had they lived, they would have grown and changed. The question was: would they have changed into people identical to those he had recreated? And if not, did that mean their memories, which he had used to recreate others, compromise his whole project?
As time went on, and he slowly repopulated the world, he became more and more haunted that he was not flaunting death at all. That, rather than bestowing immortality on the world, he had simply replaced the dead with cheap imitations. That their souls had fled into the soil, or the ocean deeps, or the cremation furnace, or maybe just been annihilated. Death had claimed them, after all, and he had simply substituted forgeries. Perhaps, after all his efforts, he had achieved only a simulation of immortality; no better than if he had made puppets or voodoo dolls of all the dead.
Eventually he understood the only way he could come be sure: he would have to die, and be resurrected himself, and see if he was the same before and after.
But even having done that, his doubts were never settled.
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